Take This To Your Grave
by gh0sty
Summary: B can do nothing but think of him, and those sad, ticking numbers. BxL, post-Another Note, Written for the In Memory Of contest.


"Beyond, it's lunchtime. Are you tired or do you want me to just bring you a little something later?"

He doesn't answer the nurse, Natalee Nullnoose; he remains curled up on his bed, his white bed, white face shoved deeply into the white pillow and body contorted against the white sheets. His back faces her - even his back is white, shirtless, only dressed in some white pants (scrubs) and self-inflicted claw marks - but his black coffee eyes are staring straight ahead at the white wall. If you look closely enough, you'll see faint pink from where he tore at it and his nails broke and bled. It was simply painted over, and he was restrained for a week.

"Alright, I'll let you sleep. I'll be back soon with your medication."

The door closes, and he bites his lip. Hard.

He wants to sleep. He wants to sleep, because with the medication comes mostly dreamless hours upon hours of not existing to the world. There is no claustrophobic, clean white, and there is no lunchtime and there are no suffocating, sincere nurses who are sexually attracted to his mussy, porcelain looks.

There is only darkness, and if there is darkness then there are no red letters and there are no red numbers.

They were the reason he ended up in this hell-hole asylum in the first place, those god forsaken letters and numbers letters and numbers eight-four-eight-nine eight-four-eight-eight eight-four-eight-seven...

'And they said rats were a plague,' he mused with such pain and tragedy in his voice that it made his entire being sink further into his self-made hole.

The hole was his safety.

The hole was his empty sleep, where in the darkness he could be consumed by it. In it, sometimes, if he had enough mental strength to focus, he could see L. He could smell him and hear his low, reserved voice that thrilled his bones to no end and if he overcomes the fear, he can reach out and touch him.

When he touches him, he notes how much colder his skin has gotten, and how his numbers drift slowly and slowly downwards...

(_eight-four-five-six, eight-four-five-four_...)

It's both a curse and a blessing, he thinks idly, how he somehow can keep track of where L's numbers are. He knows how long it will be until his heart stops and he never breathes again, and at the same time it drives him insane. It's why he's in this blindingly white purgatory in the first place.

He had marked his prison cell over and over with his own blood, writing things that made no sense to the guards and a myriad of random numbers.

Within the month, he was sentenced to a mental institution instead.

"L Lawliet, you stupid boy, you silly, pompous, invincible, fool, you're going to die, _don't you know you're going to die_...?"

B stops talking here, because he hears the knob on his door turn and in a swift movement he's sitting up straight, gazing fitfully at the tray that Natalee Nullnoose -_ onefourninetwonine_. - holds. Her eyes don't comb his body, they hold to his face and he easily sees her attraction and worry and longing to help him, to save him from his hole.

What a ridiculous, overly-helpful bi-

Seeing him sitting up, she smiles in an almost relieved way.

"I've got toast and milk and your medication... and jam."

He honestly can't believe what he's seeing. They had forbid him from having any jam, jelly, Jello - anything with the texture of it, and the reasons were obvious. It had been... it had been two years since he'd... since...

She placed the tray on his nightstand (which was bolted to the floor and also white) and put her hand in her white pocket, pulling out at least a dozen packets and discreetly pressing them into his hand.

"Keep those hidden, alright?"

B nodded fervently, tucking the small blessings under his pillow for later. In order to get her out of the room more quickly, he quickly swallowed his pills and mumbled a faint "thank you" (he knew she heard it because her face absolutely lit up) and with more of a bounce in her step, said goodbye and left the room.

In a second's time he was under his covers, bathing his hands in the sticky, mushy feel of jam, licking it slowly in the manner a lover's experienced tongue, breathing in the scent of thick strawberries and burying his face in those jelly-coated hands. His expression could be considered erotic.

But alas, this prison had ruined him. After months of reading papers about his fetish, and how they compared it to blood, B found that he felt sick. This would be L's blood a few years' time. Red, oozing, coagulated, mess, turning to jam in his veins and his heart and his head.

Fingers cramming his mouth, B found himself crying at the thought. He found that wet things were creeping down his face, quick and cold and very salty compared to his strawberry jam, and he buried his face back in his pillow to quiet the sobs.

He would finish the jam, though. The Ode to Lawliet. Strawberry jam, L's blood.

He nearly smiled at his comparison to Communion. Not that he was quite Catholic and all; he had his own religion of sorts.

"When supper was ended," he whispers to himself, "He took the cup - again he gave them thanks and praise - he gave it to his disciples and said, 'Take this cup, all of you, and drink from it. This is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven.'"

B swallows his jam and his tears, and he takes a slow, heady breath, sitting up on his bed. The sheet falls from his head, and with a slow, somber, grin, he recites the last line.

(_eight-four-five-nine_...)

"Do this in memory of me."


End file.
